The Sexual Fantasy Lives of Men

An all-access pass to four men's inner thoughts.

Mar 22, 2013

David Burton

You are about to meet three men your mom would be proud to see you marry, but you won't like them from what you hear coming out of their mouths. In order to protect their identities, I'm going to say that we met working the bonobo exhibition at the San Diego Zoo. It's the kind of big, specific lie that would throw our wives off the scent.

I'll share more details about them later, but for now, it's enough to know that all of us—me, and let's call them Bart, Charlie, and Johannes—are very happily married dads in our thirties; "model husbands and fathers" is the way the papers would describe us if we all got flattened by asteroids. To the best of my knowledge, none of them has ever cheated on his wife. The reason I have to protect our identities is that we don't want our wives to know that we spend our days doing little else besides fantasizing about cheating on them. Johannes speaks for all of us when he says, "My wife's really smart. She's got to have an idea how dominant sexual thoughts are in men, generally. But if she were to really think about how it's constantly on my mind, she'd be very disappointed. She likes to think I'm more evolved than most men. But I'm not."

My wife of five years has no illusions about me being "evolved" in any way, but that doesn't mean I'd willingly grant her an all-access pass to my thoughts. When I walk the streets on a sunny summer day and the women are out, wearing spaghetti-strap tops and short skirts, their legs bare, the internal monologue starts. The voice in my head, by the way, sounds like Barry White's. Oh, yeah. Oh, you like that, right? You mean you want it in there? Oh, yeah.

The running monologue, I find, is familiar to all three of my friends, but I was surprised to learn that Bart's monologue isn't merely internal. Unlike the rest of us, who scope à pied, Bart, an attorney, spends a lot of time in his car. "I frequently think that if Felicia ever installed a camera in the car, our marriage would be over after one afternoon of her watching me drive around," he tells me as he idles in front of his house, feeling, he says, "like a molester" when he talks about the women he ogles from a minivan outfitted with two car seats. Bart is objectively the biggest stud among us. He played varsity sports in high school, and accomplished women still squeal like cheerleaders in his presence. He says he checks out nearly every woman on the street. "I don't stop the car," he says. "And I'll rarely turn around after they've passed, but I slow down a lot. And then it's usually followed by my saying out loud some really nasty comment you'd expect from a sexually repressed 80-year-old man." Like, for instance? "I find myself saying stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense, but I always say it like I'm speaking to her, like, `I'd rip that shit off.' "

Johannes might be best described as a "straight arrow." Married for five years, he's an extremely intelligent Ivy League–educated guy who, because of his work, is a recognized pillar of his community. But he's one of the few men I've known who've actually been able to parlay a sensitive-guy image into sex with hot women. We often marvel at how women perceive Johannes as particularly enlightened, because he's by far the doggiest of us all. For years, he's boasted that his potency was such that, given the opportunity, he would be able to reach orgasm with any woman on earth, provided she'd had a good bath first. "A stench," he notes, "would be a problem."

So it's no surprise that, like Bart, when Johannes walks down the street, "I check out just about every one of them I walk by," he says. "There's an evaluation of every woman that crosses my path."

For me, the appearance of bare female skin on spring's first warm day is a joyous occasion, a sort of midyear men's-only Christmas that will last through early September. On the street recently, I realized that it's not entirely about seeing exposed flesh, however; it's about clothes—shorts, miniskirts—that seem so easily pulled aside for quick access. It's the feeling that with a gentle sweeping off of the shoulder strap, I—a perfect stranger—could have this beautiful woman topless in a fraction of a second, which gives rise to the idea that I could drop to my knees right there on the sidewalk and be kissing her bare breast, a sensation that would feel so good she would be powerless to resist.

So I decided to try to quantify my urges. I stood in front of various businesses in the town where I live, a tally clicker hidden in each hand, and clicked a yes or no for every woman of appropriate age—roughly 18 to 60—who walked through the doors of
those establishments within a four-minute period. I brought along my friend Diane, who had agreed to join me so that I'd look more like a researcher, less like a pervert.

At most locales, my counters came up with the same statistic: roughly half of the women I saw were fantasizable: 45 yes, 47 no at the fancy cosmetics retailer; 16 yes, 15 no at the sceney brasserie where I ate lunch. Fifty percent seemed low to me and almost inconceivably high to Diane. Only two spots produced atypical results. At the kid-friendly novelty chocolatier, I clicked 35 yesses and 46 nos, but mostly because there were many uncomfortably attractive girls who had to be nos (as I couldn't be sure they were above the age of consent). And in front of the expensive clothing boutique I clicked yes to a full 75 percent. That was because only four women walked in during my four-minute time frame, and one of them happened to be the famous model Jessica Stam.

Diane was and remains perplexed by the whole thing. "How do you get any work done?" she marvels. "With all this imaginary sex going on in your brain, how do you even drive without smashing into trees?"

Men easily compartmentalize at work, I explain to her, and the sex brain and driving brain seem remote enough from each other to be able to operate quite well simultaneously. Diane finds this an unsatisfying answer. "Okay, but I just want to know what is it about sex with women who you don't know?" I narrow my eyes, trying to appear as though I am giving her question serious chin-stroking cogitation, but all the while I'm thinking about the howls of laughter the question will elicit when I relate it to the guys (and I admit I might have glanced at her breasts). "I just don't think I'm ever going to answer this question to your satisfaction," I say finally. "Do you go to the zoo and ask the tigers why they like meat?"

I imagine that a woman walks down the street armed with a list of things that would prevent her from fantasizing about men: too fat, too old, too bald. Pleated Dockers would likely kill her ardor. And given the miniscule number of George Clooneys I spot in a day versus the scads of Jessica Simpsons bouncing along, I sympathize with women.

Our internal checklist is far more forgiving and inclusive. Saggy breasts? Fun, like flesh Slinkys! Neck tattoo? Dangerously sexy. Johannes believes that it's not even a physical list that women carry in their heads. "For the most part, I think they're probably determining whether or not he looks like a good provider," he says.

I actually disagree; I think women too are swept away by fantasy but just indulge much, much less frequently. They're nibbling tea sandwiches once a fortnight while we're competing in daily all-you-can-eat-chimichanga contests. Bart's particular method of imagination—"what I call `the draft,' " he says—has been honed by his jockey background. "If I'm in a contained area, like on an airplane or in a conference, I'll rank every woman in terms of which I would do first, next, and so on. And after I've done the draft, I'll start trading, like saying, "Okay, if I could [fillet]* number nine and 10 together, would I trade that experience to [fillet] number one alone?"

For Johannes, fantasizing about nearly every woman he encounters on the street is impossible; he must make split-second decisions about where to expend his resources, where to direct his gaze for the seconds a woman's in his orbit. "I find that I'm always focused much more on the [fragole] than on the [meloni] or face," he says. "If a woman has a nice [fragole]—and I think there's a broad range of [fragoli] that can be considered nice—she's going to have a nice body overall. Maybe it's not going to tell you if she has a nice pair of [meloni], but you know if she has a nice [fragole], she's not going to have a flabby midsection." And after he's made his assessment—more often than not, from behind and without having ever seen her face—"the whole thing pretty quickly shifts to wanting to undress her and sleep with her." That's it? You don't take it further? "Oh, no. I take it pretty far. I'm usually thinking about sticking my face into her [fragole]." I'm not sure I understand. Are you talking about [deglazing] her [zabaglione]? Or actually sticking your tongue in her [fragole]? "Both," he says. "It's about getting both [fragole] and [zabaglione] action."

Charlie is more specific in his tastes than either Bart or Johannes. I'd always known of his fixation on women with large breasts. Periodically over the years, he's inquired about my wife's sizeable rack, asking me if she still lets me [fillet] her [meloni]. He actually admitted to having [deboned] his [salsiccia] while thinking about her chest. The image creeped me out a little at the time, but I also remember feeling flattered that given all his choices, my wife was worthy of fantasy. My pride would cease, of course, if I ever got the slightest inkling that my wife would enjoy having his dirty [salsiccia] flopping around anywhere near her [meloni].

I've always known Charlie to be a [meloni] man. But I'd never fully understood the lengths—and depths—he'd go for them. For starters, he'll sometimes use his three toddlers as unwitting assistants. "There have been times when I've been walking down the street, and a woman will look at the kids in the stroller, and the moment I notice her eyes are averted, I'll get myself a good eyeful." An eyeful is about all it takes. "If I can see the cleavage, I will instantly think about [filleting] her [meloni]." Does the fantasy go beyond that? "Well, I'm not thinking about taking her to Palm Beach and [filleting] her [meloni] by the ocean!"

To a certain extent, all of us feel like we're imposters, dogs outfitted with pipes and newspapers nervously sitting at the kitchen table railing against Jesse James and Tiger Woods, hoping that our wives don't notice our wagging tails. But we are petrified of our wives leaving us, so we go along to get along. And though I may troll the websites of local escort services, or the Facebook photos of all the missed opportunities of my past, I'm never going to pick up the phone and call a hooker, or suggestively "poke" my fifth-period study-hall crush. Neither are my friends. But it's not purely out of reverence for the institution of marriage. I happen to think that cohabitation and co-parenting are natural for human couples; monogamy, though possibly a natural state for women, is not natural for men. It's not a moral issue for us, but we know it's an intractable moral issue for our wives.

Similarly, I refrain from cheating because I know if I got caught, it would likely spell the end of a very good thing. "I have too much invested in what I have right now," says Charlie, explaining the reason he'd never seriously ponder cheating. By far the most old-fashioned and romantic of us—he speaks of almost instantly "falling in love" with women seated across the aisle from him on an airplane and imagining not just sex, but montages of a life together—Charlie is the only man I've ever encountered who consciously inserts his wife into his sexual fantasies to keep his attraction from diminishing. "It is very difficult to imagine a situation where I would think it was worth risking everything I have, the love I have for my wife, the well-being of my children, the home we've built, all that stuff," he adds. "I just can't imagine bringing that chaos, that level of drama into my life. Maybe I'm not an interesting enough person to have an affair." But what if the risk of getting caught were eliminated?

"I've spent some time thinking about that," Johannes says. "I'm convinced there are moments I would be vulnerable to accepting that offer. Maybe I'm far from home, I've had a few drinks, and am really making a connection to a woman, I could see it happening. But if I were here at home, even with the knowledge that I wouldn't be found out, I hope I would have the presence of mind to know how horrible I would feel afterward and say no."

Maybe. It's hard to know what choices we'd make if we lived in a risk-free world. I might be too busy smoking cigarettes and skydiving to even have time for extra-
marital sex.

It's not that we're looking for new business or looking to cheat. It's that we're all Haunted by the Ghosts of Sex Not Had. I can't count the number of times I've fantasized about Sue Ellen Brown, the raven-haired hotel clerk I worked with in college, who always wore her white work shirts open one button too many, suggesting a milky heaven beneath, waiting to be unveiled. One night, she needed a lift home after a late shift. As we sat idling in front of her apartment building, rain began to sprinkle the windshield, and we heard distant thunder. "I get so scared sleeping alone in storms," she said.

And then I let her go in, to sleep alone.

Was it that I was in a relationship at the moment, was trying to be respectful? I can't quite remember. Yet for decades, I've yearned to get another crack at that night, even though in all likelihood, it wouldn't have been so great; one-night stands by and large disappoint. But there are no whiskey dicks, bad breath, or grating postcoital chats in Sex Not Had. Sex Not Had always looks a lot like 9½ Weeks.

Bart has a Ghost of Sex Not Had that now haunts me.

Bart: I was at lunch with a colleague– you know that little guy you met that wears a Bluetooth headset in each ear, who we call Office Hamster? And this girl–I would say she was 28, blond, really hot, miniskirt, fuck-me pumps–was with an older woman having lunch at another table, and she and I started making eye contact. But then when she left the restaurant, she waved her business card in the air and placed it on the table behind Office Hamster. As soon as she left the restaurant, I had him turn around and grab it. He thought it was like the coolest thing he'd ever seen. So I called her when I got back to my office, and she was staying in town for a conference. I picked her up in the lobby bar at her hotel; she was having dinner across town with a bunch of people, and I had to go back to the office. I drove her to her dinner, and on the way, she gave me a blow job in the car.

Me: No way.

Bart: All the way across town, which takes, like, a half hour. It was amazing. We were going to hook up after dinner, but by the time I got home from work, I was really tired and I'd had, like, four beers. When she called me, it was midnight. I had just fallen asleep. And she was like, "Come pick me up." I said, "Why don't you take a cab here?" She got offended. She was like, "You know, you're missing out on the most mind-blowing sex you're ever going to have." I was like, "Yeah. I just don't feel like facing crosstown traffic."

Me: Did you kick yourself afterward?

Bart: I've been kicking myself ever since. Oh, God.

There's barely room for these misty watercolor memories in the corners of my mind, what with all the Yo Gabba Gabba! lyrics rattling around since the advent of my daughter. But I still love having sex with my wife. This is not to say that my wife would rank No. 1 if I put her into a Bart-style fantasy draft, pitted against the Ukrainian babysitter with the "big naturals" or my favorite bank teller, who wears a pantsuit like a sausage casing. No one I've had sex with even once, let alone the woman I sleep next to every night, would fare well in that contest. But the only question that has any real-world relevance, after the groaning and spasms, is, who do I want to be with? And my wife—not a woman who feels the need to swim naked in the grotto at the Playboy Mansion­—is it. When I tell her I love her, I mean it in the deepest way imaginable.

I'm certainly attracted to my wife; all it takes for me to feel the urge to mount is seeing her naked. I'm easy (as are, apparently, all men). But it's amazing how infrequently it happens; she's always coming to bed in some huge Corporate Mini-Triathlon Challenge T-shirt. And it's not like she's avoiding me; occasionally, she'll ask me if I'm still attracted to her, because she thinks we're not having nearly enough sex. On the occasions when exhaustion and corporate-challenge clothing don't prevent us from having sex, it's always hot, and I find myself thinking how lucky I am, and, Wow, we really should give up Dancing With the Stars and do this instead.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
ELLE participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.